Proponents of civil unions and same-sex marriage succeeded in passing HB444 through the House of Representatives last year and it currently sits in the Senate for final reading.
Consider two pieces of information:
*1. HB444 passed by the House gives same-sex couples every single right which marriage confers. In Connecticut, that form was determined by the state court in 2008 to discriminate on the basis of equal rights and required same-sex marriage to remedy the discrimination.
*2. The proponents of HB444 claim discrimination under equal protection as the basis for HB444. However, the Hawaii Supreme Court in Baehr v. Miike held that due to the marriage amendment which was ratified on November 1998:
“The marriage amendment validated HRS